Smiling through the pain

A certain amount of testing is just figuring out what you can make yourself do when you obviously can’t do anything more. To highten the tension, and thereby make everything more difficult, every test is different and the specifics of any challenges invented by the testing committee seemingly on the fly.
Case in point: Master Lim had already directed the 1st dan candidates to do 100 kicks and the 2nd dan folks 200 kicks so it is logical that for 3rd dan we should do 300 kicks. Here I am near the end of that ordeal gutting out the last of them. This picture catches me smiling — other moments might show more of a scowl, but I find the smile generally feels better.